LogFAQs > #968437393

Finally, it's not part of your ranking, but time for another Challenge entry, since everyone below him has been ranked on your list.

138/142: Enzo Palumbo (The Challenge: USA - 9th Place)

Big Brother 12 and 22, Enzo's in a weird place in my mind where he's this useless sycophant most of the time who aligns himself with stronger players and gets carried deep into the game. BUT, he's never SO obnoxious that I rank him low...even though he's one of those "you could do better if you didn't insist on broing down with people who are obviously going to demolish you" kinds of players. As such, I wasn't EXCITED for him on the Challenge, but it wasn't like I was inherently rooting against him either. And you could be forgiven if you forgot Enzo was on the show for the first five episodes. He was never a great competitor; he lacked any sort of endurance, and he couldn't swim. Despite this, he managed to avoid being on the losing team through those first five episodes. And in those five episodes, the focus on eliminations was largely on either taking out Love Island/Amazing Race (due to the Survivor/Big Brother alliance), or targeting members of the BB23 Cookout due to spite for how BB23 went down. It also didn't help that, aside from Leo (whose personality and general lackadaisical attitude was negatives for him), there wasn't as strong of a push to eliminate the weaker GUYS as there was to eliminate the weaker GIRLS.

Anyway, episode six was when Enzo finally made a splash on the season...ironically by not making a splash at all. The teams had to jump into the ocean, climb up a hanging rope ladder, leap from a suspended shipping container to a secondary suspended platform, and memorize some symbols before jumping back into the water and replicating their memorized pattern. I'm not going to claim it's an easy challenge, but most of the teams accomplished it. Tyson and Kyra did not, due to Kyra being sick as a dog and lacking the strength necessary to make that leap, and because of this, it looked likely that they would wind up in elimination. Enter Enzo. After gingerly easing himself into the water and climbing up to the shipping container, he decided he was too afraid of heights to even TRY the leap. Thus Kyra, who even in her sickness gave it a SHOT, managed to avoid elimination. Meanwhile, Enzo's partner Justine (who'd already proven herself with a daily win AND an elimination win) got thrust into a bullshit elimination challenge with a partner who'd already proven himself absolutely pathetic.

Anyway, Enzo won because admittedly he and Justine used better strategy than Derek/Shannon (plus Shannon had an injured leg). But of the three remaining eliminations he was eligible for, Enzo partook in two of them, first by coming in last during a foot race, and then by being chosen as the only option for the massive Survivor alliance after David lost the daily challenge. In both cases, Enzo won these challenges because they were one-on-one physical altercations where his opponents were either much smaller than him (Leo in Hall Brawl) or just lacked any sort of endurance (David in Balls In). The point is, at a certain point, the other players (namely the women for whom Enzo's continued survival was a potential threat) TRIED to take him out on NUMEROUS occasions, but Enzo benefitted tremendously from all the strongest guys banding together so they'd never be at risk in the arena.

This all leads to the finale. Enzo got randomly paired with Desi in the first leg of the challenge, which was a swimming leg. And I don't know how long he TRIED the challenge in real time, but we watched Desi BEGGING him not to quit, only for him to not give a fuck, quit the challenge, and end up eliminating Desi as well through NO fault of her own. It hearkened back to that first elimination he faced, where Justine got fucked over because Enzo just didn't want to try. It was just so shitty on his part, constantly talking about how everyone underestimated him, and he wanted to rub it in their faces for thinking he was an easy elimination...and then he quits on the final leg and fucks Desi over. At the very least, David wouldn't have quit there.